Teacher Arrested For Asking Why Superintendent Got A Raise

CBS Local — A chaotic scene broke out at a Louisiana school board meeting after a teacher was arrested, apparently for questioning why the board’s superintendent was being given a $38,000 pay raise.

Deyshia Hargrave, a middle school teacher in the Vermilion Parish school system, was videotaped being escorted out of a room and then wrestled into handcuffs by a city marshal on Jan. 8. The disturbing incident took place after Hargrave asked school board members to justify the massive raise while teachers and school employees had reportedly gone without a pay hike in years.

“I have a serious issue with a superintendent or any person of leadership getting any type of raise,” Hargrave was seen saying in a YouTube video. “I feel like it’s a slap in the face to all the teachers, cafeteria workers and any other support staff we have. We work very hard, with very little, to maintain the salaries we have.”

With the board seemingly uninterested in answering the educator’s concerns, an Abbeville city marshal then charged into view, confronted the woman, and demanded she leave the crowded meeting. Moments later, Hargrave is seen being taken to the ground, handcuffed, and dragged out of the building by the much larger marshal as fellow teachers looked on in horror.

While the board members did recognize it was the teacher’s turn to speak, it’s unclear if they called the marshal into the room to cut her off or if the officer acted on his own. Superintendent Jerome Puyau, who is the beneficiary of the $38,000 raise, told local reporters that the school board was not pressing charges against Hargrave. The teacher was still jailed and later released on bond.

Although refusing to answer the Abbeville crowd’s questions, the board added that the raise was given because the Vermilion Parish schools reached certain “performance goals.”